Lily
by Sakiru Yume
Summary: If everything is imperfect in this imperfect world, love is most perfect in its perfect imperfection. Oneshot. MikanxNatsume. Rated for some mild swearing.


_**Happy holidays. This oneshot is dedicated to my friend, who is a lily through and through. I hope you enjoy it.**_

_--_

In botany, lilies can have different meanings. One is hatred, and pride. The other is purity, and humility.

It's incredible, how they can love.

Some will give their life for others. Some will give other's lives for their own.

But not many will give the lives of anybody for just one—and not themselves.

Love is most nearly itself when here and now cease to matter.

Natsume Hyuuga told himself he didn't care. He told himself that he would force himself not to care, so she could stay in the light forever and never have to face the darkness that he himself had faced.

If he got close, he told himself, they would fall together. And he couldn't bear that.

She deserved to be free, he told himself. She didn't deserve to be trapped at the school, just like he was.

So how the hell had things ended up as they had?

Somehow, in some twisted, convoluted warp of fate, they had ended up together. _Together_. What he had worked so hard to stop—even though, deep in his heart, he hadn't wanted it to—had happened.

And he liked it.

He liked the ways she felt against his body. He liked the way she gave him warmth—warmth, not searing heat, like that caused by his disease.

She made him feel whole, like he hadn't felt since he had been told that he had set his village on fire, oh so long ago.

If everything is imperfect in this imperfect world, love is most perfect in its perfect imperfection.

Somehow, deep in his heart, he knew that he would let her kill him if it would help her. And the idea scared him, the idea of somebody other than him having control over his life. Just like Persona.

But still, he couldn't force her away.

She was the light to his darkness, the relief to his pain. She was everything to him, and everything he wanted.

No matter how f-ed up their relationship was, no matter how f-ed up he was, she still stayed by him, and that alone was more than he could ever deserve.

She stayed by a monster like him, a murderer, even when she didn't need to, even when the excuse of being his partner had long run out.

There was no way he could say no to her. He would give her anything—the world—if he thought it would truly make her happy.

He could say that it was for selfish reasons—that if she had it, she would obviously share it with him, as well, that she would stay with him, if he gave her everything she could ever want, and more—but really, he just wanted to make her happy.

That seemed to be all he could hope to give her.

_Where there is real love, there is no selfishness._

She was so soft, so sweet—like a lily, just in bloom.

He was—not. He was like a withered dandelion, just a weed, dying so soon after birth, it was barely even worth noting.

But she had touched his heart—the only girl who ever could—and had made him feel, just once, like he too was a lily, proud and strong and brave, instead of just guilty and hating and in pain.

He couldn't let himself get close, he told himself. What would happen to her, then, when he died. What would happen to him if she died?

He wouldn't be able to handle it—he knew that now, and somehow always had. He would break, and they all would pay.

He couldn't let himself get close, and he couldn't push her away.

What a sick paradox it was.

She kept him from being lonely in the cruel, dark world that he was living and dying in. She kept him from losing his mind. She kept him sane, and he pretended to keep her safe. Really, he was just dragging her farther into the darkness, farther into _his _darkness, dousing it with her light.

_The opposite of loneliness, it's not togetherness. It is intimacy._

He needed her, as much as he claimed not to, as much as he claimed not to need anybody.

When he teased her, it was just to stop himself from showing his love. When he said he hated her, he was really screaming, _love me, please. I love you._

And somehow, no matter how hard he tried to hide it, others still saw through his façade. Not her, but others.

And when others saw how he loved her, he shoved her away harder, because the more that knew, the more that could use it against him—and her. How could he submit her to that?

_Take away love, and our earth is a tomb._

She was mending his broken heart, his bleeding heart, his fractured heart.

She was fixing his damaged, broken soul.

She was making him feel like he was human, instead of just the monster he knew he was.

And dammit, he wouldn't let that go away.

He would make her stay with him until she no longer wanted to, and then, when she went, he would go as well. He would leave with her, although his leaving would be more permanent.

He would never look back.

_Love is a sickness…a disease… it is the breakdown of one's mind… it is the sudden rush that occurs in your heart that leads to unusual behavior and irrational actions. It also decreases your reaction time and lowers your pace in a certain amount of degree. If this happens to you, then you've fallen for it, you're in love._

He couldn't force her away, even if he wanted to.

They were damned regardless.

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_**Well, what did you think? Please tell me. Thanks.**_


End file.
